Souls Lost (Appalachian Souls Book 1) Read online

  In her mind’s eye, Dixie saw Emrys standing there near the edge of the trees, watching, waiting, checking to be sure it was all safe and she hadn’t set a trap for him to be found out.

  “Not that you could touch me,” Emrys said, laughing. He laughed a lot. Dixie liked that about him.

  “You came,” Dixie murmured. She spoke aloud. Just thinking the words didn’t work. Emrys wouldn’t answer her then.

  “I came,” Emrys said. “You called so I came, as I am, as ever, yours to command, Child of the Blood.”

  Dixie didn’t understand what Child of the Blood meant, but she always liked the formality of Emrys’ speech. She didn’t remember how she’d come to know about him. It was something she just seemed to know. Maybe her momma?

  But her momma laughed off her comments.

  “I used to play in the garden with the pixies and gnomes and elves,” she’d said once. “They seemed so real but when you get older, you’ll understand it’s all in your mind. There aren’t any such things as fairies.”

  Dixie was older now, almost ten, but she still saw Emrys. And he still came when she called.

  “And I will always come for the Blood, for you, your mother, your daughter…”

  Dixie giggled at the thought of herself so old that she could have a daughter and cook for her the way her own momma did the cooking and cleaning. What kind of a house would she have? Would she find something on the edges of Corbin Meadow or would she live in town?

  Emrys gave her a smile and changed the subject back to what Dixie needed.

  “I wanted to say hello,” Dixie said. “And make sure you were all right.”

  “I am always all right, so long as you are there to guard me,” Emrys said. “And you?”

  “Okay,” Dixie said. “But I wish I could have a pumpkin for Halloween. Here at the house. But Mama says there’s never any reason because no one would see it, but I’d see it. And you.”

  Emrys smiled. “Your wish, Child of the Blood, is mine to command.”

  Emrys disappeared.

  Dixie waited for a bit before turning to go inside. She looked around the garden, hoping to see a pumpkin having grown there mysteriously, but there wasn’t one. Dixie sighed, wondering if her momma was right.

  The door was open a crack and the kitchen was cold. Her momma was upstairs, probably sewing on Dixie’s costume. Her daddy would be home any time.

  Dixie went to the living room, turned on the television, and expertly arranged the rabbit ears for the show she wanted to watch. There was still plenty of snow covering the picture but she could see the figures well enough and she settled on the couch. Her eyes flicked outside to the long front porch, captured by the large round orange thing that sat near the door.

  Chapter 3

  Zoe Mason-Hyer Parker watched the dark blue sedan that belonged to the chief of police cruising down the street. Taran Rees was driving quickly, probably over the speed limit, but he didn’t have his lights or siren on. An advantage of being in Corbin Meadow instead of in Portland, where he’d have to have used the flashers to go that fast down a through street.

  Zoe watched as he passed the school and turned the corner on Cedar. She didn’t know where he went after that. She told herself she didn’t care, but she was getting one of her feelings, like she always got back in Corbin Meadow, which was why she’d fled as far as she could to get away from them. Not that she was like one of those women in urban fantasy books who ran away from power. She didn’t have power. She had feelings that never made any sense.

  Why couldn’t she get a power that let her have revenge on her enemies, which would make the whole divorce thing as easy as casting off the name Parker would be when it went through? She’d at least like to know things, important things that maybe people didn’t want her to know.

  Instead she got feelings. This one felt like she was standing under a deep dark shadow and something very, very bad had happened. The fact that the chief of police was riding around in his car, going faster than the posted speed—at least to Zoe’s untrained eye—could mean that a major crime had been committed. It might also mean he was taking a statement on a lost dog.

  Deep down, she knew the police chief wasn’t on a call about a lost dog. It was something else. That feeling. Someone was dead. Zoe was as certain of that as she was that she was standing in her childhood home which hadn’t changed much except it wasn’t quite as tidy as it had been when her momma was there to supervise the housekeeper. It still smelled of lemon cleansers, though that had gone out of style long ago, and she suspected that the scent remained from when her momma polished the wood on the coffee table that now bore more than its fair share of nicks and scratches.

  The grandfather clock ticked, loud in the otherwise silent house. Zoe turned from the front window, sighing, wondering what had possessed her to come back home. She’d felt such a pull to be there, but now that she was, she was wishing she was somewhere else.

  Something bad had happened.

  Zoe crossed the hardwood, scuffed from decades of her parents walking across it and a decade and a half of her running, hopping, skipping, and even dancing on it. She walked out of the front room to the kitchen and family room area. Everything was so cut up in the house, not like the modern homes. The appliances were still black, not yet into the modern stainless steel era, although her momma hadn’t liked stainless as it picked up too many fingerprints.

  Her father didn’t care so long as things worked. Zoe curled up on the sofa that had been old when she’d been a child, a nondescript brown that would probably be the same color after ten years in the dump. There was a flat screen television, too large for the room, angled towards the sofa, but Zoe didn’t turn it on. The glass slider looked out at a covered patio, a child curled in the arms of its parent house the way the bedrooms stuck out further back on one side and the kitchen poked out on the other. Zoe didn’t even turn to look outside though the sun was still shining.

  Her stomach was tied in knots that would impress even a fisherman—not that she knew any fishermen. Zoe tried to get a handle on the bad feeling, as a therapist had once suggested to her. The feeling was everywhere in her body, from the tips of her toes to the top of her head and in every cell in between.

  It wasn’t as if she knew anyone living down the way Taran Rees had driven, not well, not any longer. Zoe breathed in, hoping to move the feeling out of her body, but like the air on a summer day, it sat there, refusing any and all attempts at creating a breeze. Like the summer air, it was waiting.

  Zoe’s phone rang. She looked at the number, but it had no name attached to it. She considered ignoring it, but maybe talking would help.

  “This is Zoe,” she said, trying to sound cheerful, wondering if there was any chance she’d succeeded, though perhaps the person on the other end was just there to persuade her that her computer had sent out a message that someone was trying to hack it and she could hang up.

  “Zoe?” The slight Appalachian drawl that always reminded Zoe just a little of Dolly Parton gave away the speaker. Donna Winston, Zoe’s best friend through grade school, who remained a good friend even through high school, though Zoe’s need for higher education and wanderlust had meant they weren’t as close as they had been when they were children.

  “Donna?” Why exactly hadn’t her name come up on the caller ID? Donna and Zoe had talked several times since she’d been home, had, in fact, talked even before she’d come. Donna had been the one to talk Zoe into coming out for a visit, to see how it felt as an adult, which is what Zoe liked to think she was doing.

  “I’m at Momma and Daddy’s,” Donna said in response to Zoe’s unspoken question. While Donna had once lived two houses down—the reason for the start of the girl’s friendship—three years or so ago her parents had decided the house was too much upkeep and “downsized” to one of the new condominiums that had been built on the edge of Corbin Meadow.

  If Zoe remembered correctly, the zoning for the condos to go through had
been her momma’s idea, a plan for how the community could grow. That had been her fondest wish, to see the place grow rather than being a town so small and so far off the beaten path that no one except the residents ever seemed to find it.

  “What’s up?” Zoe asked. Donna hadn’t just called from her mom’s phone instead of her cell because she was bored. Her momma was probably there listening.

  “Momma got a call from Mary Jo,” Donna said, almost whispering. “Mary Jo found Elaine Wilcox dead in her backyard.”

  Zoe tried to talk but only a squeak came out, her mouth too dry to force words out. The dread she’d been feeling was about Elaine. It had always been like that in Corbin Meadow. The feelings that something was wrong, and periodically that something was right, and then the call or the announcement of what had happened and the confirmation from her gut that this was what she had known.

  Not enough to be worthwhile. Just enough to unsettle.

  And it only happened in Corbin Meadow. Because even if no one else admitted it, Zoe knew that Corbin Meadow wasn’t normal, hadn’t ever been normal, nor would it ever be normal. But like her feelings, she just couldn’t pinpoint why.

  Chapter 4

  It wasn’t just Taran’s forehead that was sweating several hours later. He’d called the county sheriffs, something that Frank, the former chief and his former boss, hadn’t done when he’d been in charge of the police department. Frank had believed that what happened in Corbin Meadow should stay there and be worked by the people who loved and cared for the citizens.

  Taran believed in getting justice for the deceased. It was his own way of caring for them, never mind that Frank might have thought otherwise. Still, even when the sheriffs had come in with their criminal investigators and their forensic people and the coroner, Taran had stayed, watching and contributing what he could.

  He was across the street, leaning against one of the dark blue SUVs that been the first to arrive at the scene. Mary Jo and Louella had given statements and had been released to go back to work, though Taran was aware neither woman would be getting much of anything done. Kids at the school just a few blocks down had stood at the edge of the fenced field and watched officers or tried to see the officers from their vantage point. The teachers had done their best to keep them away, which meant they had had little success.

  Around him, Taran heard the buzz of voices, a few birds, and the low moan of a lawn mower. Whoever had been playing music earlier had turned it off or down so low he couldn’t hear any longer. It was beginning to cloud up but the humidity remained high and the temperature was going up from where it had been this morning. The storm was getting closer.

  The sheriffs knew the storm was coming, too, hurrying here and there, running sometimes, to grab this or that from a trunk or a passenger seat. Each man talking quickly, walking even faster, and not pausing to take questions even from someone like Taran, who really was one of them though he worked for a department in a town they had probably only ever seen on a map.

  Finally, Blake Fellows, the county sheriff, came up to Taran and looked him over, sizing him up. Blake was tall, heavily built, like the one time football player he probably was, and so blonde the sun hitting his hair would blind you. He was a man as solid as the Appalachian mountains where he’d lived his life, and he looked as worn with his pale eyes and lined and creased skin.

  “Glad you called us this time,” Blake said.

  Taran let the implied insult to him roll off him. Blake knew as well as Taran that the last calls hadn’t been his to make.

  “I can get you the old files from the others,” Taran said.

  “Four times, you might need the feds,” Blake said. “Just want to know before I go allocating man power if someone is coming in to take it off my hands.”

  He was right, Taran knew. He ought to call the feds, but for the moment he was reluctant to do it. He’d been reluctant to call Blake, too, but what was he going to do? Try and solve the case himself? He’d have had to justify it when he called in the forensic techs anyway. He’d decided to call in the big guns, even if it did feel wrong somehow, like airing dirty laundry for everyone to see. At least the sheriffs would know him, a little, and maybe keep him in the loop, which was something he couldn’t be certain would happen with the FBI.

  “Let’s start with you,” Taran said. “We can determine if this really is the same as the others or if it’s some copycat.”

  Blake nodded. “Be a lot easier if y’all had called us in the first time.”

  “Frank’s retired now,” Taran said. “Might want to take it up with him.”

  Blake nodded, smiling now that he’d gotten in his digs.

  Taran shifted his weight a little, his arms never uncrossing from his chest while he talked to the other man. He respected Blake, wanted to like him, but for some reason here and now he didn’t like him. Wasn’t the way he usually felt about people either. Taran knew he usually liked all the folks he ran into when he wasn’t arresting them, at least at first.

  “You got people canvassing?” Blake asked.

  “Your people don’t want that job?” Taran was surprised. He’d expected the sheriffs to take over everything.

  “Half my folks hadn’t heard of Corbin Meadow. Three couldn’t get it to come up on their GPS. Had to direct them in via cell phone, which seems stupid considering you’re just off the highway. Town like this, bet they don’t get many outsiders. Probably less likely to talk to them,” Blake said, still smiling, looking ready to pat Taran on the shoulder like they were pals when they most explicitly were not.

  “I’ll get on it,” Taran said. He’d do it himself. Had he known, he wouldn’t have wasted time. “You got an official from Louella and Mary Jo?”

  “Two broads who found her?” Blake clarified, almost emphasizing the word ‘broad’ as if he wanted to see how much he could get under Taran’s skin by insulting the people of his town.

  Taran just nodded. He didn’t want to play that game. It was getting away from warm and into hot. He was irritable. And maybe that was why Blake was rubbing him the wrong way when in real life, normal life, this guy wouldn’t have caused any problems for Taran at all.

  Blake nodded easily, trying to be good-old-boy affable which didn’t help Taran’s mood at all. He’d played pool with the guy once down in Hickory, some gathering, and they’d shot the shit, back when he’d been married and had some shit to shoot about his life. He’d thought Blake was nice. Now he wasn’t so certain.

  Taran straightened from where he leaned against the SUV. He walked across the street to his car, which was parked a house away from Elaine Wilcox’s place. He opened the door of his dark blue cruiser and grabbed his notebook. He liked writing things down better than he liked typing them on the computer. Even the pen things that let him make his marks on the system like he was writing didn’t seem to work for him. They were always going on the fritz, crapping out. Finally he’d given up and gone back to a notebook and pen, which did work for him and were far less likely to have problems unless he got caught out in a storm somewhere and the paper got soaked.

  The house on the right, where he’d parked his car, was similar to Elaine Wilcox’s in that it was brick with white trim. This one had a small white wood fence, split rail style, so as not to be a picket fence cliché. This driveway was still gravel and weeds, mostly weeds. The front was grass but for a large elm tree that grew in the yard.

  It was less tidy than Elaine’s but in a lived in way, not an uncared for way, even with the weeds in the drive. Taran wasn’t sure who lived there, which surprised him. He wondered if he was getting old or if this was one of those houses that had changed hands every few years as people moved in and out as jobs brought them to Corbin Meadow and then pushed them away.

  Bethany Shields had talked about that a lot. She was always pushing the mayor to add incentives to bring industry to Corbin Meadow for job growth. She’d convinced Taran they needed it for the tax base, and he’d been pleased when they’d lan
ded a midsized financial tech firm that wanted cheaper overhead than they’d find down in Charlotte. Land in Corbin Meadow was cheaper and the cost to build was lower as well.

  A lot of jobs had come out of that, and he’d been proud of Bethany for managing to get everyone on her side. She might have worked as the mayor’s secretary but she’d been a power behind the throne, listening to the people and trying to give them what they wanted. It had been a blow to the community when she’d died.

  Through the gate and up the steps to the narrow concrete stoop, this house not having been updated with a porch, Taran rang the bell and waited. He left a card to have someone call him and started down the rest of the street. It’d be faster if he just went to the diner and found the people there, gossiping with the neighbors, but he knew that wouldn’t fly with procedure. He needed to follow the book on this one. That meant ringing a lot of bells and getting a lot of nothing.

  Taran shook his head, carrying his notebook, trying not to look too dejected, wondering why he felt so out of sorts about bringing in the sheriffs when he’d done that on purpose, knowing it was the right thing. Yet all day he’d struggled with the feeling that it was all wrong and he’d done the worst possible thing he could.

  Chapter 5

  Zoe listened to her dad talking about the gossip he’d picked up down at the bar earlier in the evening. He always went out during the day because, he said, it made him feel as if he were still useful and had a purpose. Grocery shopping at the locally owned store on the corner of Meadow Blue and Main, followed by sitting at the Saunders Coffee Shop with four other men his age who were also retired, then lunch at the diner or maybe the tavern and grill, and then home for a couple of hours. Two nights a week he bowled after dinner, one night he had poker, the rest he spent an hour or so after dinner down at the tavern, this time in the bar section rather than the restaurant side.